


I Have Reached a Part Where No Thing Gleams

by emeralddarkness



Category: Batman - Fandom, Batman Beyond, Batman the Animated Series, DC - Fandom, DC Animated Universe
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2014-12-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeralddarkness/pseuds/emeralddarkness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Tim is reclaimed following the events of the flashback in Return of the Joker, things only get more complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be something of a cross between a series of oneshots and a multi-chapter fic and I don't know how long it's going to last. I do, however, have more coming.
> 
> I know that the flashback scene in RotJ shows Bruce walking over to loom over Babs and Tim (he looms so well, Bruce does) but I'm calling unreliable narrator on that, given that he'd just been stabbed in the leg with a like 4 inch blade up to the hilt and then shoved 20 feet down a pile of building blocks to land facing down, either tearing out the knife or shoving it further in _or both_ , and that this whole thing was bad enough that like 40 years later he has a mild limp. You shouldn't just be easily walking after something like that.

_When I had journeyed half of our life's way,_  
 _I found myself within a shadowed forest,_  
 _for I had lost the path that does not stray._

\- Dante's Divine Comedy: _Inferno_ ; English Edition, translated by Allen Mandelbaum

* * *

Robin's-

J. J.'s-

 _Tim_ 's face was buried in Batman's shoulder. He was still giggling, the sound weak and horrible and absolutely devoid of humor, and his tears were soaking Bruce's shoulder right through his suit and cape. Barbara had whispered that it would be all right, and stroked his hair, and hugged him close as she lied. Bruce did none of these things. He simply held onto the boy, this poor, broken child, as though they both would shatter if he didn't.

Thus far, Batman had been extraordinarily useless. The world had felt (still felt) like a nightmare, and even now there was a part of him convinced that all he needed to do to peel back this veneer of madness was wake up. Shock, that cool, analytical portion of Bruce's brain murmured. He couldn't fully grasp the reality of the situation yet. Bruce ignored that voice and tried to focus, because the prevention of horrors (the protection of _children_ ) was the reason he'd become Batman in the first place, and surely when it was so important he couldn't be left helpless.

In those centuries after Tim had first killed the Joker, it had been all Bruce could do to pull himself to his feet. His head was full of white noise. The fight of a minute before had been clean and sharp and simple, rage and adrenaline swirling together to draw out a ruthlessly clear line of purpose-- but now the fight was over, and the Joker's body was crumpled against the oversized alphabet blocks, and Tim was sobbing in Barbara's arms, and the bright, hard line that Bruce had been able to see so well was fading as the world crumbled. None of this changed that there was still work that needed doing, and his partners (his family) needed to be taken home, and something needed to be done to tilt the world back onto its axis, and so as he always did he’d pulled closer the mantle of duty and forced himself to take a step forwards.

Or he had tried.

It had only been minutes since the Joker had slammed his penknife into the Batman's leg, but Bruce's head was so full and so empty, and there were so many things competing for his attention with the Joker finally dead (dead, dead by Tim's hand instead of Bruce's, the poor mad child, dead and shot and crumpled on the ground not ten feet away as Tim both laughed and sobbed in Barbara's arms) that he had completely forgotten about the wound. The shock again, maybe, because he hadn't felt any pain. The unexpected bloom of fire that screamed across his nerves when he’d tried to put weight on his leg was enough to make him collapse, with a noise that was halfway between a snarl and a groan.

“Bruce!” Barbara had yelped, jerking a little towards him before catching herself back, and Tim began laughing again with a new high edge of hysteria and terror, and struggling against Barbara’s hold. Batman wondered where he wanted to run.

“I’m fine,” he’d growled, pushing himself up with his hands and forcing his arms not to shake under the weight of nothing but himself. He could feel the blood now, as he hadn’t before, seeping through his body armor and soaking the weighted silk of his cape.

Focus.

“It’s just my leg. The Joker stabbed it, and now it doesn’t seem to want to take weight.”

Barbara hadn't seemed to know quite how to react, so she'd done nothing at all except continue to clutch blankly at Tim, staring helplessly at Bruce. He'd looked up to meet her gaze for a moment before turning away. Against the bright colors and black of her hair and her costume, Tim had been shockingly, terribly white.

"I- I should go get Alfred," she'd finally said, voice barely audible. "We need to get you out of here. Both of you." Her eyes flicked from Bruce to Tim; she couldn't seem to decide who to look at.

"Not Alfred," Bruce said, a few moments later than he should have. His leg, now that he remembered about it, was screaming at him. He had trained himself to focus through the pain, to shove it away whenever inconvenient. Pain was nothing if you knew how to control it, and he did know. How was it that he had forgotten the injury so completely just minutes ago, and now he couldn't seem to think of anything else? "He'd only be able to do so much for me, and I doubt he could do anything for Tim. Get Leslie."

There was a pause. "Leslie? She's that doctor, isn't-"

"Dr. Leslie Thompkins, yes. She manages the Thomas Wayne Memorial Clinic. Do you know the address?"

"Yes, I- I think so. I've never been there, but Dad-"

"Go. She… she already knows. About us, who we are. Take the car, and bring her here. Tell her it's for me."

Barbara had hesitated: a moment of frozen stillness before flight.

" _Batgirl._ "

And with that word she'd come to herself again, and passed Tim over to Bruce, who dragged himself to his knees and gathered the boy close. There was a moment, after she stumbled to her feet, when she looked at Bruce over Tim's head, and he could see the terror and the shock and the horror and the sorrow and the pain in her eyes- but then the moment passed, and she'd spun on her toes and flown from the room like a bird.

He'd lost track of how much time it had been since he'd heard the Batmobile's engine roar as it pulled away. Somehow it didn't quite seem to matter, perhaps because the reality of the situation was finally beginning to sink in. The boy, his _Robin_ , (his responsibility his partner his child his friend his fault his fault his _fault_ ) was here in his arms, and the Joker's body was sprawled behind him, and upstairs was a room full of rolls of film and slides and God knew what else chronicling the methodical torture of a child he was supposed to have protected. Bruce could feel himself beginning to shut down, as that impartial, dispassionate corner of his mind that he had trained to categorize a situation regardless of circumstances tried to calculate how much greasepaint would be smeared across his costume by the end of the night.

Tim's arms tightened around his neck as he shook with tears and laughter, and Bruce held him and waited.

Dr. Leslie Thompkins looked like she always did, as she had for years, with a white coat and her white hair pulled up into a neat bun, and a white medical bag filled with too many supplies dragging at her arm – she almost seemed to glow in the dim florescent light. She didn’t, Bruce thought will the same dull ache of horror, belong here, no more than the children did. “Batman,” she’d said breathlessly as she ran into the room, “ _what_ is going on? Batgirl hardly told me any-” The sound of her voice stopped as though it had been cut when she caught sight of the room. Batman turned his head and tried to see the scene as she would – blood and broken glass, crushed furniture and a ripped medical sheet, a flat metal table with straps hanging limply at the sides and the Joker’s body crumpled on the floor like a forgotten doll. It was meaningless, in comparison.

Batman forced himself to his feet, favoring one leg (really this wound couldn’t be worse than the thousands of others he’d suffered over his life) and softly, the thing that had once been Tim began to giggle. He was staring at Leslie’s glowing white coat.

“Merciful heavens,” she murmured as she stared first at the child and then the man with lost eyes. It sounded like a prayer. “Br- Batman, what are you- who-”

“It’s Tim,” Batman said, and realized belatedly that he wasn’t sure if he had disguised the raw pain in his voice. “Robin. The Joker, he-”

Leslie’s gaze darted to the crumpled body, to the pool of blood slowly creeping from it still, then back to Batman. Her bewildered eyes were suddenly accusatory. “You didn’t-”

“Doctor,” Batman said, his voice harder and more ragged, almost under control. “Right now it’s time to care for the living.” And with that, Leslie’s eyes dropped back to Tim, and her face twisted. He was squirming a little in Batman’s arms, his giggles as sharp as the yelps of a puppy.

“Perhaps a sedative-” she began saying, pulling out a syringe and small bottle. “Lord knows he’s acting as though he needs one-”

“ _No!_ ” Batman had said, the sound so sharp that it was almost a yelp itself, his hand flying up on instinct, as though to stop her. Once again, he wasn’t fast enough.

Bruce hadn’t truly been holding Tim to incapacitate him, which in hindsight was a mistake. The combination of his loosened hold and the distraction of pain and blood and death worked to his disadvantage, and J. J. still had all the training of Robin, whether or not the personality behind the skill had been shattered. Either might have been enough to allow his grip to be broken; both took any doubt out of the equation. In the space of a heartbeat J. J. had twisted away and leaped back to the alphabet blocks, scrambling on the floor as he went for the gun that had killed the Joker. They froze as he fumblingly picked it up and pointed it at all of them; shrill, terrified giggles still bubbling through his throat. Bruce’s heart was frozen.

Leslie moved first, taking a hesitant step forward. “Timothy,” she said gently, “do you remember me? It’s Doctor Thompkins – remember when I set that arm for you? I’m here to help you again, and just like last time you’ll have to trust me-” She was walking forward, very slowly, her voice as soothing as it would have been if she’d been talking to an injured dog. Tim was retreating as she stepped forward, the shaking gun still pointed at her, shrieking little laughs that sounded more like screams.

“ _Tim_ ,” Bruce said, brokenly.

When finally he hit the wall and could not retreat any further Tim laughed like he was in pain, then when Leslie took one more step he dropped the gun and sprang forward; a different sort of attack. Bruce’s eyes went wide as he saw the patterns, as he saw the target, Tim’s laughter high and insane, as Bruce knew he was too far-

“ _Batgirl_ ,” he barked, and half a moment later she threw a batarang. As it had with so many criminals, it sang through the air to hit a sweet spot on Tim’s head, and just like the criminals had always done, he crumpled in unconsciousness about five feet from his intended target.

Leslie put a shaking hand to her mouth and took a step back, Batman bowed his head and wished to curl into nothingness. Twenty feet away, Barbara slid to the floor and started to cry.

At Wayne Manor, Bruce’s first stop – before he took off his bloodstained uniform, before he allowed the makeshift bandage to be removed and his leg to be treated, before the Batmobile’s engine had cooled, was the master bathroom upstairs. Tim’s body felt heavy, cradled in his arms, which was odd, because Bruce felt as hollow as a blown eggshell; the only thing left to fill him were the shreds of a paper heart.

Bruce turned on the shower and stepped under the stream as soon as he reached the bathroom. It was too cold. He could barely bring himself to care, but Tim, what if he got sick? He shielded the boy until the temperature felt more like summer rain than early spring, but couldn't wait longer than that. Gently, Bruce took a washcloth and tried to wipe away the whiteness from Tim’s skin, the green from his hair, making sure to keep the boy’s head tilted as he did so, to keep water from running into his nose and mouth. Nothing seemed to be coming off. After a minute or so, Bruce realized his hands were shaking. He stripped off his mask and then gloves, dropping them in the soap residue and blood and water that was swirling down the drain and scrubbed harder at Tim’s arms and hands, trying to be gentle, trying not to hurt him, making sure to keep his head turned and _it wasn’t coming off_ -

“Tim,” he murmured, in a voice that cracked, “Tim I’m so sorry-”

“Sir?” 

Alfred’s voice was very close behind him, full of pain and hopelessness and so _gentle_ that at the sound of it something in Bruce broke. He slumped slowly to his knees on the shower floor and, still holding Tim, started to cry. He stayed there, trying to wash away the palor, as blood and tears were washed down onto the boy in his arms, until he felt him begin to stir. Tim struggled, briefly, against the hold and Bruce felt himself shatter as he did.

“I’m sorry, Tim, I’m sorry, you’re safe, you’re home, I’m so sorry, Tim. I’m so sorry. You’re safe, it’s over, I’m so sorry.”

Tim laughed. The sound was bitter and insane, and Bruce didn’t know any more if it was water from the shower or tears running down Tim's cheeks, or even if those tears were his or Bruce's. He was twisting, and Bruce didn’t want to restrain him, he didn’t want to knock him out (a medical table, straps hanging by the sides) but he couldn’t let Tim run, couldn’t let him become any more damaged than he’d already become-

Slowly, gradually, like as though he were dying, Tim’s writhing slowed, and the laughter turned to gasps, then to nothing. Bruce didn’t move as he did, and he didn’t move when the slim white arms slowly, almost fearfully, wrapped themselves around him, when the garish face buried itself in his shoulder. He was still for a long moment as Tim clung to him, and then slowly, Bruce’s fingers curled in his damp hair, clinging in return. Water ran down his cape onto the marble of the bathroom floor as he held him close, two silent, broken things.


	2. Chapter 2

The first Bruce knew of any visitor was the distant sound of the clock being – there was really no other word for it – _slammed_ closed, followed by footsteps taking the stairs three at a time, then coming down the hallway at about the same speed. Neither Alfred nor Leslie would ever walk like that, Tim was in his room, and Barbara was still in town – not that even these last two were likely to make that kind of noise. That really only left one option. He didn’t look up from the books and notes spread across his desk as the door to the study flew open and was slammed shut behind the newcomer with enough force that the window panes rattled in their framework.

“Were you even planning on _mentioning_ anything?”

Bruce’s eyes finally flicked up at that, to take in Dick. He was standing in front of him, still in costume, domino clenched in his gloved hand. His hair, or all of it that wasn’t normally protected under his helmet, was tangled from the wind and hung in knots down his back, and his unmasked eyes were snapping like a cut power line. “I’ve been busy.” He looked back down again, briefly, and capped his pen. “I _am_ busy. Besides,” he continued as he looked back up, as though this was a normal conversation, “you have Blüdhaven to worry about.”

Dick slammed his hand down on the desk, open-palmed. Bruce glanced at it, then looked back to his face. “The _hell_ you’re busy. Too busy to pick up a phone? And the hell _I’ve_ been busy. Not too busy for this, as you’d damn well know if you ever took one second of the day to consider how human _beings_ just _might_ feel when they find out they didn’t know about crap like this happening because nobody _told_ them.”

“It seems like you found out.”

There was a moment when it seemed like Dick would choke on his words. “From _Alfred_ , you _insufferable-_ ” His other hand came down on the desk as he leaned down on it, hard. That was a position that could be used, a presence could press down like a weight, but he didn’t seem intent on trying to lever it. His expression was so tight that for a moment Bruce wondered if he _could_ move. His voice matched when he spoke a few moments later, tight and painfully controlled, sharp edges and jagged angles and awkward shapes in his mouth forcing their way out with too little breath.

“I could have been here. I _should_ have been here. Do you really think I’m so busy in Blüdhaven that I wouldn’t have been here to help you look for Tim?”

Bruce turned his head and looked at the wall, and Dick snarled in frustration again. “God _damnit_ , Bruce, would you at least _look_ at me? _Why didn’t you call me?_ ”

“There wasn’t anything you could have done that Batgirl or I weren’t already handling.”

“Do you even _know_ how I learned about all this? I called the house. _I_ did, Bruce. And when I did, Alfred told me that it wasn’t a good time to talk, because Tim-” Dick’s voice strangled on the last word, and Bruce felt the hole in his heart, which he’d spent so long carefully covering over, begin to leak blood again.

“There wasn’t anything you could have done.” His voice had become tight and sharp as a razor wire with the effort of not collapsing again. There wasn’t time for that.

“ _You don’t know that._ ”

Bruce closed his eyes, and for just a moment his voice cracked and boomed like a blown out speaker. “Dick.” At the sound of his voice Dick’s hands went loose again and slipped off the desk, and he took a graceless step backwards. He stayed there for a long moment, unmoving, staring sightlessly at a folder perched at the edge of the desk, his mouth and throat tight.

“Alfred said he was bad, but… he’ll be all right, right? I mean, he’s a tough kid.” Bruce wasn’t entirely sure who he was trying to convince.

“I don’t know.”

Dick looked up again, eyes were full of fierce, stubborn despair. “Bruce, that’s not-”

“I don’t know, Dick. Leslie is doing everything she can for him, but at the moment that’s not much. He’s… I don’t know. The Joker pumped such a mixed cocktail of drugs into him that I’m amazed he survived them all. I can’t risk adding anything more, or letting her add anything more, even to try to neutralize it, until I know what every part of it is. Before I try to do that, I have to make sure that anything I do try won’t make any other part worse, because I don’t know if he’d survive that.”

Something in Dick snapped again, and lashed out at Bruce. “So why aren’t you working on it?!”

That was finally too much. “ _I am_. The tests are running _right now_ , you’d have seen the machines as you came through the cave if you’d been paying attention. The fact that you weren’t is your responsibility, not mine. Staying downstairs to mind the machines isn’t as productive as what I’m doing here.” And, besides avoiding the distraction of downstairs up here, this was closer to Tim, if he was needed. But if Dick couldn’t work that out for himself, then he deserved not to know it. Dick had already made it clear enough that he wasn’t owed anything.

The other man took a long, even, carefully measured breath and backed down, eyes going once away from Bruce’s face. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…” He didn’t finish the sentence, maybe because he didn’t know how to finish it honestly, and after a moment picked up a sheet of paper and stared at it sightlessly for a moment before his eyes finally focused and he began to read. Release forms, requests for medical equipment, longhand calculations. His voice was even when he spoke again. “They wouldn’t let me in. What happened to him?”

“The Joker-”

“I know the Joker had him, Bruce. That’s not what I’m asking. What happened to him?”

Bruce took a breath to steady himself, and turned to look at the window, and then he told him. All of it, or all that he’d been able to piece together from the films and slide shows and notes that were more full of jokes than medical records and the ruined equipment left at Arkham. Dick stood still in slowly growing horror as Bruce blankly listed torture after torture, mental and physical, electrical, chemical, heat and cold and suffocation and starvation, serums and toxins and mind games, the old-fashioned methods and the new. Joker had tried a little of everything, apparently just because he could. “They kept him strapped down for it, and continued for the better part of three weeks.” His voice was cold as winter. He felt numb. “I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you. It’s always possible that more was done to him, I don’t know how often the camera was running-”

“He _filmed_ it?”

Bruce didn’t answer, and there was a long, long pause. “Tell me you killed him.” Dick waited for an answer that didn’t come, and the silence pressed down like a weight. “Tell me you did it, Bruce, because if not I’m gonna go out right now and-”

“I didn’t.”

“You-!” cried Dick, his voice full both of shock and betrayal so intense it was horror.

“I didn’t have to. Tim was the one who did – he shot him in the heart. He’s dead, trust me, I checked. And I wish to God it _had_ been me, but it wasn’t.” He stared down at his hands. “I think I would have, if Tim hadn’t. I was closer than I’d ever come.”

The words hung in the air like physical things, and then as they faded Dick laughed with absolutely no humor, the sound harsh as a crow. “Well at least there’s _that_.”

“If you want to check, the body’s in the old Arkham.”

“No, I believe you.” After a moment, he spoke again. “Can I see him?”

“That might not be a good idea.”

“Is there anything left that _is_?”

Bruce bowed his head. "No."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After sitting on things for ages trying to force some sections that didn't want to happen into being to do everything chronologically I figured what the heck. I might edit it into the right order later, but for now I'm just going to start publishing things.


End file.
